Nora Grace-Flood file photo
New Haven's Rosette Village.
Should Connecticut’s Department of Housing set aside $10 million to build 500 tiny homes on municipal and private land throughout the state?
A new bill sponsored by East Hartford Democratic State Sen. Saud Anwar says yes, absolutely.
The two-page proposal is called Senate Bill 1364: An Act Establishing a Program and Appropriating Funds for the Construction of Tiny Homes. It was discussed at the state Capitol in Hartford on Thursday as the Connecticut General Assembly’s Housing Committee held a public hearing on 17 proposed bills.
The current proposal follows statewide tiny-home initiatives in Texas, Michigan, Florida, and Oregon, and a homegrown community of six pre-fab dwellings right behind the Amistad Catholic Worker House in the Hill.
Formerly homeless New Haveners have been living in those shelters for over a year. The Elicker administration ordered United Illuminating to cut power to the dwellings last summer after the expiration of a 180-day state permit granting these structures relief from complying with the state building code, thereby rendering them “illegal dwelling units.”
As drafted in advance of Thursday’s public hearing in Hartford, the text of Anwar’s proposed bill directs the state’s housing commissioner to unlock $10 million from the state’s general fund for partnerships with private and nonprofit organizations to build 500 of the sub-400-square-foot structures.
Nick Callegari, a student at Yale’s School of Management and a Housing Policy Fellow at the state’s Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity, and Opportunity, testified in support of the bill. He said tiny homes have a role to play in addressing Connecticut’s homelessness crisis and dearth of available housing. The state has seen three straight years of increases in its homeless population, which now exceeds 5,000 people, and is about 100,000 units short of where it needs to be to meet demand for new dwellings.
At its current pace — roughly 5,000 new units each year — the state won’t come close to filling that hole for decades, which lawmakers, housing advocates, and developers often attribute to labyrinthine zoning rules and soaring materials costs. Tiny homes are attractive, in part, Callegari said in testimony before the Housing Committee, because they can be made using relatively inexpensive 3D-printed modular construction parts, which would bring the per-square-foot building cost down from $275 to $100, coming out to somewhere between $20,000 and $40,000 each.
The homes may be tiny, Callegari added on Thursday, but they’re also mighty. “They can withstand hurricane force winds, are inherently fire resistant based on their cementitious properties, and meet or exceed all water-proofing, freeze-thaw cycle, and energy efficiency testing,” he said. Another plus of the tiny homes, aside from being cheaper than traditional housing styles and built for extreme weather, is that they can be put up in “weeks to days,” Callegari said, whereas denser apartment complexes can take years to even break ground.
In response to Callegari’s testimony, Bridgeport Democratic State Rep. Antonio Felipe, who co-chairs the state legislature’s Housing Committee, said that he’s been thinking about the potential of tiny homes “for a number of years.” He said the biggest difference they can make is by providing a “rent-to-own” path for low-income people in the state. He also expressed skepticism over whether the rented dwellings could be paid for and used long-term by recently homeless people without more capacious job training and social service supports in place, a concern shared by Deputy Speaker and Waterbury Democratic State Rep. Larry Butler.
Callegari told the committee that much of the short-term financial load would be fronted by the state, with about 70 percent of costs held in escrow, leaving only minimal rental or mortgage payments, in the ballpark of $450 per month.
The saga of New Haven’s tiny home community in the Hill, meanwhile, was front and center at the Thursday hearing, especially in questions posed by Sen. Anwar to New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, who was there to testify on two separate bills, SB 1361: An Act Establishing a Housing Growth Fund for a Municipal Grant Program and Raised House Bill (H.B.) 7033: An Act Prohibiting A Municipality From Imposing Any Penalty On Homeless Persons For Performing Life-Sustaining Activities On Public Land.
Citing the city’s “exploration” of other tiny home projects, Elicker’s comments burst the bubble somewhat on what until then had been a mostly cautiously optimistic conversation about the drafted bill. He told the committee that when the city of New Haven costed things out to be in compliance with state and municipal building codes, the sticker price of a single tiny home shot up to $100,000 or more.
“Tiny homes are much more appropriate for a suburban environment or as an accessory dwelling unit,” Elicker said. “So in a city like New Haven, while we still have a decent amount of developable land, we think the best use of it is to build much more dense housing. Frankly, we’ve spent a lot of time with our team looking for a potential pilot location for tiny homes and just haven’t found the appropriate spot.”
Maria Weingarten, a New Canaan resident and the founder of a group called CT 169 Strong, wrote in to the committee in opposition to the tiny homes bill. “There are many questions around whether these shelters would be up to the health code in any community,” she wrote. “Are these actually tiny houses as defined in the building code or temporary homeless sheds that do not have kitchen or bathroom facilities?”
John Guskowski from the Connecticut Chapter of the American Planning Association, meanwhile, wrote in in support, describing the tiny home bill as pursuing a “worthy goal, as it addresses the need to provide shelter for temporarily unhoused people in a style of housing more likely to be accepted in a broader range of communities.”
He also called on the legislature to consider supportive single room occupancies (SRO) as an alternative to tiny homes. “Many municipalities have existing buildings which are potentially excellent candidates for conversion to SROs. This will provide State agencies and municipalities greater flexibility for determining the appropriate solution for their community in terms of both cost, site selection and other local factors.”